CHAPTER XL 



OF THE NATUBE OF MOTION. 



WE have seen that the question of the possibility of 

 motion engaged the attention of thinkers at a very 

 early period. We also found that the difficulties in the 

 way of conceiving the possibility of motion are due to a 

 misconception of the relation between the extensive and 

 the intensive aspects of quantity, together with entangle- 

 ment in the fallacy that the " infinitely small" is abso- 

 lutely without dimensions. 



Thus it requires no very extended research to enable 

 us to set aside the arguments of Zeno as having no real 

 force or validity. But we shall find another contradic- 

 tion in the conception of motion, considered from the 

 modern standpoint, which, at least within the limits of 

 inquiry allowed by anti-metaphysical investigators, is far 

 more difficult to solve than those presented by Zeno. This 

 difficulty will develop of itself as we proceed. 



Let us note now that space presents no obstacle to mo- 

 tion. On the contrary, it is a primary condition of motion. 

 It is, besides, a veritable abstraction. It is, and yet is 

 just nothing. It possesses not a single positive character- 

 istic, and has therefore no negative limitations or distinc- 

 tions by which one part of space can be distinguished 

 from any other part of space. 



So far as space itself is concerned, then, neither Zeno 

 nor anyone else could by any possibility ever tell from the 



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